


No Good Choices (The No Good End Remix)

by lachatblanche



Category: X-Men (Alternate Timeline Movies), X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Infidelity, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-29
Updated: 2018-07-29
Packaged: 2019-06-10 01:14:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,096
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15280341
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lachatblanche/pseuds/lachatblanche
Summary: Charles loves Erik and he knows that Erik loves him right back.It is unfortunate, then, that Raven loves Erik too.





	No Good Choices (The No Good End Remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Gerec](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gerec/gifts).
  * Inspired by [The Hideaway](https://archiveofourown.org/works/5609341) by [Gerec](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gerec/pseuds/Gerec). 
  * In response to a prompt by [Gerec](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gerec/pseuds/Gerec) in the [xmen_remix_madness2018](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/xmen_remix_madness2018) collection. 



> **Prompt:**
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> Safe work, if any (no limit): Lost and then Found
> 
> Previous remixes, if any:  
> They are all tagged in the title as Remix:  
> \- The Painter  
> \- Sins of the Father  
> \- Denial  
> \- I'm Going To Save You  
> \- You Read My Mind  
> \- Burn It To Ashes  
> \- It's Magic!  
> \- Nowhere to Run  
> \- Steal A Kiss And You'll Break Your Heart
> 
> I am okay with my X-Men comics/original movie trilogy/cartoon works being remixed: yes  
> I am okay with my collaborations being remixed: yes  
> I am okay with being remixed in a different medium (fic for art or art for fic): yes  
> I am okay with my past remixes being remixed: yes  
> I am okay with certain WIPs being remixed: yes to all
> 
>  
> 
> A Remix of 'No Good End' (Chapter 27 of 'The Hideaway') by Gerec

Charles sat slumped against the wall in the hallway, his eyes closed and his knees drawn up to his chest, his heart breaking.

_If you love her, tell her. Tell her the truth._

Erik had been gone for hours but the words he’d spoken still rang through Charles’s head, sounding over and over again like a death knell.

 _Tell her_ , Erik’s voice demanded, over and over, the words sounding exactly the same as when he had pressed Charles up against the wall he was now leaning against, with Charles’s legs clasped tight around his waist. _Tell her the truth._

It hadn’t been the first time he’d made this demand. It wouldn’t even be the first time that Erik had asked it of him whilst deep inside him, pressing finger-shaped bruises into his skin.

And still Charles did nothing.

_Tell her you love me. And that I love you._

The words should have been sweet, should have been wanted and received with joy. Instead they pierced through Charles’s lingering defences and twisted painfully into his heart. 

_You shouldn’t_ , he thought, suppressing a sob and digging his short, blunt nails deep into the skin of his thigh. _You shouldn’t love me. **I** shouldn’t love **you**._

And yet there they were. With Charles in love with Erik and Erik in love with Charles. 

And Raven in love with Erik.

Charles swallowed painfully, his nails digging deeper into his skin.

He didn’t know if Erik loved Raven in return, even if only a little. He had never dared ask him and Erik had never volunteered the information. Whatever his feelings were, though, it was clear that they did not match the depth of Raven’s.

She had never loved anyone in the way that she now loved Erik, Charles knew.

(He ignored the fact that he had never loved anyone the way he now loved Erik either.)

Raven deserved better. She deserved better from Erik and she damn well certainly deserved better from _him_. 

He was a coward, he told himself, gritting his teeth in self-loathing. Nothing but a pathetic coward. He was a coward for keeping this from her, a coward for not having the guts to tell her what she so plainly deserved to know.

He was a terrible brother.

This thought hurt almost worse than anything else.

If only he had met Erik first, he thought bitterly. If only Raven didn’t love Erik so much. If only _Charles_ didn’t love Erik so much.

If only, if only, if only. 

Charles closed his eyes and bent his head, falling into the same patterns of thought, the same paths of misery that he had been circling for the past three months. There was nothing else he could do, nothing else he could say. Either he told Raven the truth and lost her forever or else he kept silent and continued to betray her at every turn even as he slowly died inside from guilt, his soul condemned by each touch of Erik’s hand on his skin or brush of lips against his own.

There were no good choices. Not for him. Not in this. There was only the truth and the lie.

He raised his head, suddenly feeling resentful of his own selfishness, hating his own weakness. For three months he had been nearly suffocated by his own fears and self-loathing. For three months he had been plagued by indecision and cowardice. For three months he had been unable to look his sister – his sister whom he loved _so so much_ – directly in the eye for shame. For three months he had been betraying her behind her back, breaking her trust and forever damaging the one relationship that he valued the most in his life.

It could not go on. It had to end. It _had_ to.

And yet.

Charles _was_ a coward. He _was_. Because he knew, deep down, that he would never be able to tell his sister what he had done. He could never bear to see the look in her eyes, the devastation, the disgust, the _loathing_ that she would feel when he told her truth. Anything but that. He could handle anything but that. 

But then at the same time he could not stop this thing with Erik. Erik wouldn’t let him. And – worse – Charles knew himself well enough to know that he would not be able to stop. To be near Erik was to be in reach of exquisite happiness, the likes of which he had never known before, and, having drunk from that well, Charles knew that he could not be near him and refrain from drinking again and again and again.

There was only one solution then: to _not_ be near Erik.

Charles closed his eyes, a single tear running down his cheek. 

The solution, now, was obvious.

The letter from Oxford was sealed up in a drawer in his room, an object gratifying to look at but nevertheless something that – _then_ – had been impossible to accept.

Not so anymore. 

No, he thought, a dreadful sense of acceptance rising in his chest. It was the answer. The answer to everything. He could not hurt Raven. He could not set aside Erik. What he could do, though, was _leave_. Leave and never come back. Or, at least, not until he could be sure that he could never hurt Raven again.

It was the only good choice. 

It was the _only_ choice. 

The time for hesitation was over. Charles’s mind was made up.

Slowly he rose to his feet. He wiped the one lingering tear from his cheek and took in a deep, shuddering breath. Then he slowly walked up the stairs to his room and began to pack.

*****

He called Raven from the airport three days later. He had spoken to no one, said nothing of his plans, said no goodbyes.

Not till now.

The phone was ringing. And then Raven – dear, _dear_ Raven – was scolding him, berating him, voicing her concern at his unexpected disappearance. He listened to her voice, so familiar and so beloved, and he knew that he had made the right decision. 

He listened to her quietly, drinking in her words, trying to capture them all in his memory, and waited patiently for her to come to a pause.

Above him, the airport screen started to flash: _Flight BA21965 - Now Boarding_.

Charles closed his eyes. The line was clear. He took a deep breath and began to speak.

‘Raven … I took the job at Oxford. I’m moving to England … and I don’t know when – or if – I’ll be back …’


End file.
